“The thoughts that have been going through my head–it sucks,” summed up Alex Reyes. “It sucks just to go through this and miss an entire season. But if those are things that have to happen to get back on the field at 100% than that’s what we’ve got to do.”

The St. Louis Cardinals rookie will likely undergo the procedure tomorrow morning to repair a ruptured elbow tendon. Dr. George Paletta will perform the procedure.

Checked out while in town for the Winter Warm-Up, Reyes didn’t begin to feel any discomfort until more recently.

“I was throwing a side at home,” explained Reyes. “I felt something different–I threw an off-speed pitch and I thought I’d let the trainer know. Apparently, this is what happened.”

“It was kind of a pain throughout my elbow that I hadn’t felt before.”

Social media reaction was rampant with the news yesterday of Reyes undergoing an MRI, with some reports coming before the testing had even concluded. Contrary to those reports, Reyes shared the decision about the surgery was not made until this morning.

“We actually got the results back today,” he shared, pointing out the second opinion still had not returned from Dr. James Andrews. There was not much optimism that opinion would differ from that of Paletta and the Cardinals medical team.

Part of the roster for the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic, Reyes also clarified that the injury occurred during his normal throwing routine–not ramping up for the tournament.

“I was just throwing a bullpen, getting ready for Spring Training,” he said.

Four years ago, Reyes dealt with an elbow strain, but that injury did not cause a fear that Tommy John surgery would become an eventuality for the 22-year old right-hander.

“Not necessarily,” he said. “My arm felt good from the day we did that in 2013. It felt good until a few weeks ago, so here we are.”

Disappointed by the news, Reyes does recognize that Tommy John surgery is fairly common place in baseball these days.

“There’s a lot of guys that have been through the surgery–the success rate’s high,” he said. “I’m sure a lot of guys are going to talk to me about it. I spoke to Waino about it a little. They just tried to help me out and cheer me up a little bit.”